


you know i'm such a fool for you

by dollsome



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-17
Updated: 2019-04-17
Packaged: 2020-01-15 08:47:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18495484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollsome/pseuds/dollsome
Summary: Eve waits. Villanelle hallucinates. Set after 2x02.





	you know i'm such a fool for you

**Author's Note:**

> This is one of those shows that I truly never planned to write fic for because it's Just Too Good, but the end of 2x02 was so agonizingly great and I was totally shook by my own sudden desperation to see Eve, like, wrap Villanelle in a blanket and take care of her after the truly awful past few days she's had. (I know Villanelle is a terrifying serial killer! I know! I know! My heart just forgets every once in a great while! And it was really hard to see her brought so low by a few seriously creepy old dudes!)
> 
> This was inspired by Jodie Comer's frequent comment in interviews that Villanelle probably just wants to curl up and watch movies with Eve (I feel like that is extra where her weary brain would go after her Bad Last Few Days), as well as by that flawless Clueless reference from 2x02.
> 
> Title from "Linger" by The Cranberries, in tribute to Elton leaving his Cranberries CD in the quad. Clueless forever!

_But I'm in so deep_  
_You know I'm such a fool for you_  
_You've got me wrapped around your finger_  
_Do you have to let it linger?_

* * *

Eve takes another bath.

The water trickles into the tub, slow like rain down a windowpane. Like hell she’s turning it on full blast, letting the roar of it cover up what might be happening outside this room. Niko knows to be on his guard. Everything’s all locked up. Two guys who really know their stuff are stationed outside.

 _Cute,_ she thinks Villanelle would say, and then slit their throats and use their blood to paint valentines on the wall.

Eve sits naked in the almost-empty bathtub, waiting. The shock of the cold porcelain hurt at first, but no so much now. She’s used to it. She watches as the water inches up, up, up in a whisper. Even as the bathroom stays quiet and familiar, normal, still, a little dirtier than it should be (God, she needs to buy a new toilet brush), she can see it happening.

Villanelle standing beside the tub, her eyes alight with interest. Dragging her fingers along the white porcelain, staring at Eve like she wants to cut her open or maybe eat her. Her other hand pressed over the wound that Eve gave her, her sweet pink sweater wet with red.

Eve closes her eyes and breathes in sharp. The water, getting higher, tickles. Threatens to swallow her up, but slowly. Slowly. Nothing about this will be quick. No mercy.

“Where are you?” She asks it aloud by accident, which fits. What isn’t spilling out of her these days that should stay neatly in? Like Villanelle’s blood spilled out and she tried to press it in, put it back, save her beloved psychopath from the death she deserved. “What the hell are you thinking?”

* * *

 “Clueless?” says Eve.

“It is a good movie!” Villanelle protests while Eve throws her head back, hair dancing, and laughs. The laugh is not pretty but Villanelle likes that. She is the pretty one in this relationship. Eve is something different. Something new.

Besides, Villanelle can teach her to be pretty. Eve is a fast learner. Villanelle knows that already. She presses her fingers to the kiss on her side. It aches, a good hurt.

“Oh, I agree. Clueless is the shit. But you’re a terrifying super-genius assassin, not a teenage girl in 1998.”

“I am just like Cher,” Villanelle reveals.

“Oh yeah?”

“Adorable. Perfect. Good clothes.”

“She’s not perfect, dummy. That’s the whole point of the movie. She has to grow up and learn.”

Villanelle considers it. The words make her sore and sick. The world rushes around her now: the big outside whirling by while she is stuck in here next to a man she would like to kill. The air stinks.

Her head hurts.

Eve Polastri, Eve Polastri, Eve Polastri.

Eve is looking at her, waiting.

“You can be Paul Rudd,” Villanelle says, curled on the sofa in silky pajamas, staring up at her funny girlfriend. Exactly where she wants to be. “Your hair is better, though.”

“I’ll take it. That guy doesn’t age.”

“Maybe he is a vampire,” Villanelle suggests, pressing her tongue to her left canine tooth and grinning.

That is one of their little jokes. (All couples have them.) Liking sharp things.

Eve gives in like she always does for Villanelle. Eventually. “Fine. Clueless it is.”

She sits down at last, and Villanelle moves for her without complaining. When it’s love, the things that usually make you see red come easy. She puts her feet in Eve’s lap once Eve has settled, and Eve rubs them and compliments her pink toenails. The sofa is covered in chenille blankets and throw pillows with sayings that Villanelle cannot read for some reason. Her eyes don’t want to focus. The coffee table in front of them is covered in a beautiful feast. Popcorn and candy and ice cream and lemon drizzle cake. Eve makes Villanelle work for some things, but not cake. Eve is not a monster.

The cake is huge. Eve does not take any. She wants Villanelle to have it all, after these hard last few days and their little spat. Villanelle thinks she will save Eve the last forkful anyway.

Giving, that is what love is.

It takes Cher Horowitz an hour and thirty minutes to learn that, but Villanelle knew it the first time she set eyes on Eve. She has been giving her everything ever since. Eve didn’t understand that at first, but now she does. Now they are happy.

Villanelle takes a big bite of cake. Eve watches her, smiling.

Meanwhile, the movie appears on the TV screen like it should. No stupid searching through all the streaming services. No pushing too many buttons.

(A phone with no buttons, twisting over and over until her fingers hurt, her heart eating itself. _Eve Polastri! Eve Polastri! Eve Polastri, you piece of shit!_ How did she get out? She can’t remember. But she did. She did. Good riddance, creepy doll house. Go fuck yourself with a knitting needle, Julian. Oh, wait. You can’t.)

“Okay, so you’re probably going, ‘Is this like a Noxzema commercial or what?’” says Cher on the screen. Villanelle speaks along with her, the perfect Valley girl.

Eve lifts her eyebrows, amused but impressed too. Everything Villanelle does, Eve savors. It’s why they work so well together. Villanelle thinks she will mention that if they are ever in one of those When Harry Met Sally interviews where you explain how you found your sweetheart.

 _It was love at first sight,_ Villanelle will say, meaning it.

 _In a bathroom_ , Eve will add, dry.

Villanelle is the romantic. Eve is the one who needs wooing. No one has worshipped her properly before, so she is not used to it.

“Like, oh my Gawd,” Eve says now, teasing. Eve is American but her Valley girl voice is still terrible. Eve is a bad liar, Eve cannot hide anything she feels, and sometimes Villanelle loves this about her the best of all.

“I know all the words,” Villanelle says modestly.

“Of course you do,” says Eve. “Nerd.”

She does not mean that, though. She means _Genius_ , she means _Angel._ Sometimes you have to hide your love under disdain because otherwise it is too much and you will die of it. That is a thing normal people do.

So fine. Villanelle will be a nerd.

Eve steers Villanelle’s feet to the floor so she can get closer and put an arm around her shoulders. Villanelle lets Eve move her and curls up in her gladly. She twists her fingers in Eve’s long black hair. Eve hums in the back of her throat when Villanelle tugs a little. Just playing.

“‘Daddy’s a litigator. Those are the scariest kind of lawyer. Even Lucy, our maid, is terrified of him--’”

“If you talk along for the entire movie, I’ll fucking kill you,” Eve says with another un-pretty,  fantastic laugh.

“You would miss me too much,” says Villanelle. That is why she did not just give up and die on that bed, or lie down in the alley. The world does not deserve to be without her. Eve gets that. Not enough people do. It was very lonely, before.

Eve’s face turns serious. When her eyes are solemn, she is so beautiful it could choke you. Eve slips her hand underneath Villanelle’s silky pajama top and presses her fingers to Villanelle’s side. Lightly, lightly. She could push down hard, tear her open again, shove her fingers in while Villanelle cried and pull them out slick with blood.

“I love you, you know,” Eve says, tracing careful circles over the wound. Music from the movie plays under her words. “That’s why I …”

“I know,” says Villanelle. They speak the same language.

Eve’s mouth curves. She leaves her handiwork alone for now.

Villanelle settles against her shoulder, sleepy, staring at the bright candy colors on the screen. She cannot remember if they’re at Eve’s flat or her own apartment or somewhere new that belongs to them both. She thinks it is that last one. That, or heaven. Because of the cake.

All she knows is she is not in a tacky old car with a disgusting old man, the second disgusting old man to nearly beat the life out of her today. She is not wearing a nightgown that smells like slow death and doll parts. She does not look hideous in her distorted reflection in the side mirror.

That is not Villanelle. It might have been Oksana once, but who can remember? Not her.

Eve saw her when they drove past. Eve saved her.

“What are you thinking?” Eve asks, her voice like sinking into warm water, and Villanelle touches her face like all the best lovers do in the movies, and Villanelle is without her, a prisoner in an ugly car with an ugly man, the road winding away, away, away.

She can barely move. Still, she presses her fingers to the kiss on her side.


End file.
